Yes, Keith, doubtful whether we should give praise to Alexander the Great for his conquering and slaughtering, but the Great Library of Alexandria that was later built in his name, helped spread the gift of reason far and wide to combat a misguided faith, a gift so much needed in the world today.

Yet too much faith in religion rather than commonsense won out, and it is so interesting that eons of time later, the English philosopher, John Locke, though still remaining a Christian, gave voice to the following which brought on the Glorious English Revolution of 1688.

The positive side of Locke's anti-authoritarianism, was that he believed in reason to overcome faith in grasping the truth, and as he goes on - optomising human fourishing for the individual and society in respect to both material and spiritual welfare.

Certainly those Middle East countries had the chance to tone down a deadly Islamic faith with Golden Greek Reasoning, but instead later passed the wisdom onto a struggling West, themselves falling into their own Dark Age.

Not that us Westerners just lately have been using reason in a commonsensical way, as John Locke would say.

y

Keith,

Countries are not necessarily hobbled by Islam. To the contrary:

During the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars made significant advances in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, engineering, and many other fields. During this time Islamic philosophy developed and was often pivotal in scientific debates—key figures were usually scientists and philosophers.

The prominent Iranian scientist Ibn Al-Haitham used the scientific method to obtain the results in his book Optics. In particular, he performed experiments and used the scientific method to show that the intromission theory of vision supported by Aristotle was scientifically correct, and that the emission theory of vision supported by Ptolemy and Euclid was wrong. It is known that Roger Bacon (who is usually erroneously given the credit for having founded the scientific method) was familiar with Ibn Al-Haitham's work.

Science was one of the most powerful areas of the Islamic culture of the period.

Iran strives to revive the golden age of Persian science. The country has increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and has been ranked first in terms of output growth rate followed by China.[86]

Despite the limitations in funds, facilities, and international collaborations, Iranian scientists remain highly productive in several experimental fields as pharmacology, pharmaceutical chemistry, organic chemistry, and polymer chemistry. Iranian scientists are also helping construct the Compact Muon Solenoid, a detector for CERN's Large Hadron Collider due to come online in 2007.

In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics is a UNESCO chair in biology,[87] and in late 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep by somatic cell nuclear transfer, at the Rouyan research centre in Isfahan.[88] Iranian scientists also introduced an herbal drug that may protect those already infected by HIV from the spread of AIDS by strengthening the immune system: "IMOD" was invented by Iranian scientists in 2006, by using nano technology.[89]

Iran is not the fundamentalist Islamic backwater you might think it is, or how the west (particularly the US) might try and portray it.

Congrats, both Karsten and Keith for paying tribute to Iran's earlier contribution to the growth of early science.

In turn it makes one not only disgusted with our leaders, but also our own scientists for not only paying historical respect to Iran/Persia, for earlier scientific achievements but also letting our Phd's cop the dirty and even finding it hard to find a job because they are not swayed by the lies and spin that they cop not only from smart-a'sed business bosses, but also from the chicken livered of their own kind.

Sadly this is also especially so of the bulk of our religous leaders, who would never admit that we owe so much to the earlier Islamic thinkers for holding what really is the Golden Rule of wisdom amd understanding, that faith must always be tested with reason